PodTech: RIP
Well, they've had a good run but apparently the Casa de Scoble is heading for the big sleep. Or is it the dirt nap? I can never remember. No announcement yet but we hear it's imminent. Word is that Scoble was planning to bail in January anyway but now he won't have to.
Context & Ripple Effects
Robert Scoble has been the franchise player of this story since 2006, when his resignation from Microsoft made him the most famous hire in podcasting and landed him at PodTech, which had been producing corporate shows — including an exclusive podcast with IBM's podcasting team — as early as 2005.
Now The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs reports that PodTech's run is about to end, with no announcement yet and the news characterized as imminent. Both halves of the report are unconfirmed: the shutdown itself, and the claim that Scoble had been planning to bail out in January regardless.
First-order effects
- PodTech's hosts and production staff are left hanging on an unconfirmed shutdown report with no company statement to confirm or deny it.
- Scoble is the one person insulated by the news — if the January-exit rumor is accurate, a collapse spares him the awkwardness of announcing a departure from a dying company.
Second-order effects
- Sponsors attached to Scoble's shows and corporate clients like IBM, whose exclusive podcast PodTech produced, suddenly face the loss of their distribution channel and must shop for a new production home.
- Rival podcast networks and video-blog studios get a rare opening to absorb both PodTech's talent and its advertiser relationships in one stroke.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the first generation of podcast startups built around a single star blogger proves too dependent on that personality to survive, pushing talent toward acquisitions by established media companies instead of standalone ventures.
The trend: Podcasting's first venture-funded studios, organized around celebrity bloggers, are colliding with the economics of standalone digital-media companies.